Overview
For any business, there is a serious risk of losing crucial files in the event of an unexpected outage. Backup and recovery is the process of copying files that are critical to operations to a separate second environment. In the case of a disaster, the critical files would be saved as they would be in a separate location. As cloud-based storage solutions become more affordable, cloud-based backup storage is rising in popularity for many IT sectors. When the need arises, backups can significantly cut a business’ recovery time and restore data much faster.
Disaster recovery is a different strategy that some businesses use to mitigate risk in outages. A disaster recovery plan is a predetermined procedure that a business must follow in order to minimize the negative effects due to a disaster or outage such as loss of data or down-time. This process often include timeframes in which the tasks must be completed. For a more complete picture of a disaster recovery plan, please refer to this article that I have previously written.
Almost every business that deals has its own servers or is at risk of a crash should have at least one of the two options in place (backup vs. disaster recovery plan). Since a disaster recovery plan also encompasses backups, it is my recommendation that every business at risk creates its own disaster recovery plan as well as creating backups. However if this is too time-consuming or expensive, the bare minimum would be having a backup on critical files. Amazon Web Services has emerged as a leader in this industry. In the following section, I will discuss how AWS backup and recovery.
How does AWS handle Backup and Recovery?
Amazon Web Services are increasing in popularity as they offer customers multiple zones of availability, scalability, and cloud-based computing and storage at a relatively low cost. As a global leader in cloud services, Amazon has its own set of solutions and approaches to developing a backup and recovery solution.
The first steps that AWS suggests for a recovery plan would be to identify RTO and RPO requirements. RTO measures how long a system is able to be under repair before there are serious long-term effects. RPO measures how often a system needs to back up storage to be able to continue with relevant data after a disaster. Every business will have their own unique values for RTO and RPO depending on factors that are exclusive top their situation. For more information on RTO and RPO’s please visit this article.
AWS offers a recovery solution that is applicable to a business whose workload environment is entirely run on AWS. This is referred to as a Cloud-Native Infrastructure plan. If this situation is pertinent to a business, Amazon has many built in tools that turn a disaster recovery nightmare into a manageable solution.
The first tool is known as EBS Snapshot-based Protection. This tools allows for AWS users to utilize block storage for their needs whether it be a database backup or unstructured data backup. This tool copies an Amazon EBS volume and transfers it to Amazon S3. This duplication process stores the data across multiple of Amazon’s availability zones. Therefore, in case of the failure of any availability zone, the data will still be stored at another zone. This tool is functionality can be adjusted to perform at any level depending on the requirements of its user.
Amazon Web Services also offers tools that are specifically tailored to database backups. A user has the option of running their own database on EC2 or make use of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). RDS is useful as it allows for its users to create a backup live read-only copy of their database. This is useful for databases that must always be running and whose recovery time needs to be as short as possible.
How does Microsoft Azure handle Backup and Recovery?
One of Amazon Web Services greatest competitors in the cloud services sector would be Microsoft. Microsoft has launched its own competing cloud-based storage and computing entity called Azure. Azure offers multiple options for storing data as well, including: locally redundant storage and geo-redundant storage. It offers even more backup component suggestions.
The first backup component is Azure backup (MARS) agent. These backups are stored in the Recovery Services vault of Azure. This component does not require a separate backup server. This component can be deployed on any Windows server suing Azure.
The second backup component offered is known as System Center DPM. This component protects workloads by creating application-aware snapshots. This allows for files, folders, VMs, applications, and workloads to be backed up to the Recovery Services vault. This component also is able to store backups at a locally attached disc or tape.
Another backup component that is offered is known as Azure Backup Server. This backup server is also able to create application-aware snapshots, is compatible with the Recovery Services vault and is able to back up VMware VMs. However, this backup server does not require a System Center license. For more information on Azure, please visit this article.
AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
Both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are well-developed and thorough services. Thus, both offer high-quality backup and recovery solutions. In this portion of the article, I will compare the two option’s backup and recovery solutions.
Similarities:
- Scalability
Both AWS and Azure are highly scalable. The user does not have to worry about limits on administrative overhead. Also, the level of service is easily manipulated for either option.
- Durability
Either service will provide its user with high durability. Both options store their backup data in multiple locations so there is a slim chance that any data will be lost in the case of a disaster.
- Pay-as-you-go
This sort of payment method seems to be the norm when considering cloud-based services. This method of payment means that a user will only have to pay for services as they need them. No long-term contracts or fees create flexibility for customers.
Concluding Thoughts
In my opinion, either Azure or Amazon Web Services would be a good option for a company that is looking to back up its files through a cloud-based service. However, simply because it has been around longer, I would personally use AWS services. They have been proven to be reliable and have an extremely impress durability of 99.999999999% for the objects stored within it.
Bibliography
“Operational backup, recovery, and DR for Amazon Web Services.” N2WS, N2SW Software Inc., n2ws.com.
Warminski, Joe . “Backups vs. Disaster Recovery – Covering Your Bases.” Think IT, SingleHop LLC, 9 Aug. 2017, www.singlehop.com.
“Backup and Recovery Approaches Using AWS.” Amazon Web Services , Amazon Inc., June 2016, d0.awsstatic.com.
“Backup and Recovery.” Amazon Web Services, Amazon Inc., aws.amazon.com.
Markgalioto. “What is Azure Backup?” Microsoft Docs, Microsoft Inc., docs.microsoft.com.
“Disaster Recovery and Backup Solutions.” Microsoft Azure, Microsoft, azure.microsoft.com.